For years, that was the conventional wisdom. And why not? The last time we took a direct hit, gasoline cost 31 cents a gallon. It was 1960 when Hurricane Donna blew through.

Hurricane Charley forcefully reminded us where we live.

On a Friday night five years ago this week, Charley steamrolled from Southwest Florida across the state and through Orlando.

Then two more storms — Frances and Jeanne — passed over Hutchinson Island on the east coast and crossed the state south of Lakeland. The trio of hurricanes packed varying punches and produced a collective anxiety. Surviving the aftermath required physical and emotional cleanup.

Yet five years later, losses and lessons of Charley, Frances and Jeanne have not lingered. Local businesses and emergency-preparedness officials worry that because the region has spent five years largely free from the kind of damage wrought by one of its most devastating storm seasons, most Central Floridians aren't as prepared for this hurricane season as they should be.

"There seems to be a very noticeable trend of complacency and apathy, and that is a very scary thought from an emergency manager's perspective," said Manny Soto, emergency manager for the city of Orlando.

What Central Floridians have forgotten, experts say, was the impact of Charley's 145-mph winds on Aug. 13 and ensuing winds and torrential rains from Frances and Jeanne, which made landfall Sept. 5 and Sept. 26, respectively. (Hurricane Ivan also hit Florida on Sept. 16 but mostly damaged the Panhandle).

The morning after Charley, parts of Central Florida woke to ripped up roofs, toppled trees and widespread power outages. Fallen trees decorated streets from Orlando to Merritt Island, and thousands of homes and businesses were damaged — some rendered uninhabitable. Some residents went more than week without power, without air conditioning.

It was the fifth-most-costly storm in U.S. history, according to the Insurance Information Institute.

Combined, the storms (including Ivan) did more than $45 billion in damage to Florida, and nearly 3 million people went without power because of storms at some point during the hurricane season. The Federal Emergency Management Agency took disaster-assistance applications from about 1.3 million households and businesses in Florida that summer, and ultimately provided nearly $1.6 billion in grants.

Surprising inaccuracyIt was a harsh lesson. Did we learn anything from it?

Well, if we didn't know weather forecasting was an inexact science, we did after Charley. Some Floridians took stock in early predictions that Charley was headed for Tampa and evacuated to Orlando, only to be surprised when the storm changed course.

"There are times when the weather pattern is very changeable, and we will come out and say what our confidence level about the pattern is," said Scott Spratt, a warning-coordination meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Melbourne.

Since 2004, the National Hurricane Center has changed the way it presents its advance hurricane mapping to match how people use its predictions. Where it once used to emphasize a projected track of a storm — a line of probability — it now encourages people to look at a wider cone of possible tracks.

The hope, forecasters said, is to make all residents in the potential path of the storm more wary.

"What we learned in the '04 season was there was way too much concentration on the skinny black line," said Dennis Feltgen, a meteorologist with the National Hurricane Center in Miami. "A storm is not a line on a map."

As for hurricane preparations, Central Floridians show signs of being less than vigilant, if 2009 is an indication. Hardware and home-improvement stores — businesses that are filled when storms are imminent — saw little uptick in crowds after the storm season began in June.

"[Traffic] wasn't real overwhelming," said Doug Thacker, manager of Home Depot on Diplomat Circle in Winter Park. "We make a hurricane area just to bring awareness for the customers."

The hurricane area features nails, boards and other items people typically use to secure their homes and businesses.

Publix, the region's largest supermarket chain, created a crisis-management team after Charley to ensure it could stay in operation longer and move food and products more efficiently in a storm's aftermath. It also has reminders about hurricane season in the stores and on its Web site, spokesman Dwaine Stevens said.

Worries waneBut even having the items right in front of them doesn't necessarily motivate Central Floridians to prepare well in advance to protect their property during hurricane season, which runs through Nov. 30.

In 2005, the year after the storms, Palm Bay had hundreds of residents come out for a hurricane-preparedness lesson — so many, in fact, that the city had to have two sessions, said Mary Schultz, emergency-preparedness coordinator for the city of Palm Bay.

This year, the city's hurricane-preparedness lesson was down to about 20 participants.

"It was pretty disappointing, but the people who did show up were enthusiastic," Schultz said.

Even people who've suffered storm damage to their homes and businesses can be lax about future preparation.

"It's odd," said Julie Rochman, president and chief executive officer of the Tampa-based Institute for Business and Home Safety. "People who have had property losses either feel like, 'I've had it happen to me; that was my one bad experience, and what are the chances it'll hit me again?'"

Or they become zealous about hardening their homes.

The latter are in the minority, she said.

Five years after Charley, Frances and Jeanne, state officials and those in Orlando say they changed in the aftermath, and those changes took hold.

"The benefit of the 2004 storms was a unique relationship that emerged between local, state and federal officials," said Pamela Keil of the Florida Recovery Office of the state Division of Emergency Management.

That relationship meant a centralization of efforts so different agencies didn't duplicate or contradict one another's services.

A similar operation also worked on the local level.

"From the city perspective, one of the key lessons learned was about the importance of having a centralized coordination effort when it comes to responding to the city's need," said Soto, Orlando's emergency manager.

The city has since used its centralized operation, which includes police, fire, city executives and other first responders, to deal with subsequent emergencies, Soto said.

Another lesson was the importance of making sure that messages about disaster preparedness were more broadly available and understood to a changing demographic.

"Providing that basic information in both English and Spanish, that's something very positive," he said.

Of all the recorded hurricanes to hit the U.S. since 1851, 36 percent have made landfall in Florida. A look at the paths of the major hurricanes (category 3 and higher) that have passed through the state. The most affected counties are in the shaded area.